South Indian broadcast organisation, the Raj Television Network, has installed Omneon's Spectrum media server as the basis of its new tapeless multichannel SD set up. The Spectrum supports a four-channel ingest and six-channel playout workflow.
The Spectrum installation is part of a facility wide upgrade corresponding with the rollout of the Tamil language broadcaster's first 24-hour news station, which began broadcasting in June 2008. In addition to an increasing viewership in South India and Sri Lanka, Raj Television has recently expanded its reach into the Tamil community in Malaysia via Astro-DTH, a major direct-to-home player in the region.
The Spectrum servers allows Raj Television to store up to ten days, or 500 hours, of programming in digital file format, enabling an automated playout operation to replace its existing manual system. The deployment also brings greater efficiency, reliability, and broadcast quality to its operation.
The Spectrum systems at Raj TV interface with AP ENPS for electronic news gathering, Apple Final Cut Pro for editing, and Orad DVG for three-dimensional graphics and channel branding. Omneon partner and local systems integration company Shaf Broadcast implemented the project, which went on air in June this year.
"The Spectrum system simplifies our operation considerably by enabling us to schedule and perform simultaneous ingest and playout and by affording real-time control of our complex broadcast workflow," said M Ravindran, director of Raj Television. "We have been impressed with how easy it has been for us to learn to use the system. Significant benefits were experienced almost immediately not only for our team but also for our viewers, who saw the improvement in reliability and quality."
